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Bringing the crack since December 2003

Ultimate Kingpin: Part 2

So to recap: Spidey learned about the Kingpin's presence in New York and wanted to do something about it. He managed to infiltrate the Kingpin's quarters and stole his security tapes, finding evidence of Fisk murdering one of his underlings and releasing it to the media. Thus, Kingpin fled the country.

Now...he's back.

In #47, the Enforcers are roughing up someone who owes Kingpin money. Spider-Man comes, causes trouble and then the police arrive.

#48, Peter is pissed. He got into a fight with his teacher over the Kingpin being able to walk free and was suspended. He was also fired from work for bringing the matter up to Jonah, asking why he was focusing all his time on Spidey when Fisk is a bigger problem. So he decides to take it out on Fisk.

Later, Ben Urich has an interview with Sam Bullit. The anti-Spider-Man issue is brought up, and Ben Urich asks why, with all of the issues New York has, that Bullit would tackle Spider-Man. Bullit says Spider-Man is a symbol for all the havoc caused by vigilantes in costumes, and Urich responds that some of these vigilantes are in fact government employed.

Urich, it turns out, had an extra recorder hidden under his jacket. With Bullit exposed, Jonah has no choice but to grudgingly revoke his support and publish an editorial about Bullit's mob leanings.

#49, the Enforcers decide to rough Jonah up for his disobedience.

Spider-Man, it turns out, was planning on paying Jonah a visit of own to protest Jonah's general douchebaggery. Ergo, he's forced to save Jonah. In the process, the Enforcers get the upper hand on Spidey.

Spidey uppercuts Ox, knocking him out. Jonah grudgingly thanks Spidey. Later on, he rehires Peter and apologizes for his behavior, admitting that he may have been hasty in judging Spider-Man. It's a nice scene and one of Jonah's best moments in either continuity. More incentive to buy the trade.

Anyway, Spidey decides to pay a visit to Fisk.

Prior to this, pretty much all of Spidey's vilains were brought to justice at the end of their arcs. This was the first time that the villain wouldn't be put away so easily, and IMO established Fisk as one of Spidey's best antagonists.

Putting it all together makes the story flow so much better. This story-arc is the best part of Ultimate Spidey, but man, was it all so decompressed. It'd be different if the pace was faster. Just, faster pace, better pace for a monthly comic. It's like Bendis thinks they're a weekly, or something.

You have no idea how many years I spent wondering if I hallucinated that cartoon. All I could remember was the obligatory Drugs Are Bad episode where they all teamed up together. (Because dammit, even crime bosses have to draw the line somewhere.)

The inability of a ruthless criminal with vast resources and an absolute lack of moral scruples to track down someone whose face he has seen and can identify was always one of the stupidest fucking things about USM.

In the tri-state area, conservatively, that's about a million kids, with about a quarter of a million white males in that age group within New York City alone.

Fisk would have to spend every waking moment doing this for a considerable span of time, or spend some of his depleted fortunes on hiring detectives to do it for him, when he is already attempting to defend himself from a serious murder charge, run a massive criminal enterprise without anyone outside the organization being able to prove that he's running it, and coping with a huge amount of media scrutiny stemming from the former two events. There is virtually no way he would be able to bring in people to find Peter without either getting massive attention from law enforcement agencies that he's already trying to duck, or one of those new hires letting word leak that he's hunting for a specific white kid.

or spend some of his depleted fortunes on hiring detectives to do it for him

Yeah it's unthinkable that he would spend some of his by all appearances still considerably vast fortune hiring detectives to find a person who has cost him millions of dollars and continues to be a threat to himself and his organization.

There is virtually no way he would be able to bring in people to find Peter without either getting massive attention from law enforcement agencies that he's already trying to duck

There are virtually unlimited ways that a person who, per the story, managed to kill a man on-camera and have the issue be dropped, and who also manages to do every single other thing involved in running a criminal empire while maintaining an ostensibly legitimate facade, can have someone found without attracting attention from law enforcement agencies.

Yeah it's unthinkable that he would spend some of his by all appearances still considerably vast fortune hiring detectives to find a person who has cost him millions of dollars and continues to be a threat to himself and his organization.

He did, or at least attempted to. We see it right up in the scans; he gave Spider-Man's description, and it was too vague to be of any use whatsoever, and he had no images to go with it because Spider-Man destroyed them.

There are virtually unlimited ways that a person who, per the story, managed to kill a man on-camera and have the issue be dropped, and who also manages to do every single other thing involved in running a criminal empire while maintaining an ostensibly legitimate facade, can have someone found without attracting attention from law enforcement agencies.

No, actually. A man that has killed another man on camera, had to spend three million just to set foot on US soil again, has lost much of his holdings and influence in the past six months he's been gone, is being closely watched by the law (who unlike last time, now have something definite to pin on him, and not mere hearsay and stories that can't be proven) does not have an "infinite amount" of ways to find a person, especially when they have no pictures of the person and just a vague description to go by.

Not to mention that by this time Nick Fury and SHIELD have taken a vested in Peter Parker and wouldn't be too happy to find out someone's out snooping for Spidey's alter ego.

Pretty much what nefrekeptah said. He's not an omniscient criminal mastermind, especially now; he's actually in real danger of losing everything, and can't afford to drop it all and go into a quixotic attempt to find the one generic-looking white kid in the tri-state area who he saw once months ago. It's a stupid criticism of the story.

In so much danger that he backs a candidate for public office running on a WE HATE SPIDER-MAN platform and then sends his men to attack the editor of one of NYC's major newspapers. The latter effort failing as a result of intervention by Spider-Man!

But say, circulating the likeness of a teenager among his associates with a note saying hey, if you see a kid who looks like this, drop ol' Fiskie a line - this is simply beyond the capabilities of e'en the mighty Kingpin of Crime.

Damn, what is it with Mark Bagley and Ultimate Spider-Man? Anywhere else I see his art it just seems kinda mediocre and doesn't quite work for me, and yet in USM he just knocks it out of the park again and again.

"Are you hitting on me?"Sheesh, of all the things he could have said, nothing could have been more perfect than what he said then. A threat from Kingpin would make anyone shit their pants (or more stoic people frown intensely in silence) but Spidey took away all the fear I had bubbling.

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